


FF X/V

by Bitsy



Category: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, M/M, don't worry about tidus, i'm kind of the worst tho, sir not appearing in this film
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-04-20 14:12:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14262735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitsy/pseuds/Bitsy
Summary: Noctis Lucis Caelum had had enough.The elemental flask was primed with a flick of his thumb, and yanked out of his jacket pocket a moment later. A blizzaga ought to put this damn hunk of scrap down. Or at least make the road slippery so it could fall.He kicked off and flipped sideways, tossing the flask underhand at the daemon’s feet.A magical mishap sends the Chocobros to Spira. This entire fic is a flimsy excuse to ship Prompto/Rikku, sorry not sorry.





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t normal, the way the iron giant moved. It wasn’t normal at all, the usual daemon horror compounded by an improbable, impossible movement, like a marionette jerking around on invisible strings. The way it kept its balance, no matter what they threw at it, when in dozens of fights prior with its brothers, they eventually toppled. It wasn’t normal.

Noctis Lucis Caelum had had enough.

The elemental flask was primed with a flick of his thumb, and yanked out of his jacket pocket a moment later. A blizzaga ought to put this damn hunk of scrap down. Or at least make the road slippery so it could fall.

He kicked off and flipped sideways, tossing the flask underhand at the daemon’s feet.

“Noct, _WAIT!_ ” 

That was from Ignis, somewhere to his left, but it was too late, the spell was already cracking the yellow beveled glass showing through the black iron filigree..

Wait. Yellow? Oh, no.

He’d grabbed the wrong flask. Blizzaga in the left pocket, _thundaga_ on the right, right, stupid, stupid…

There was a sort of a slow motion crawl of a second or two before he hit the ground. Everything imprinted itself on his memory indelibly, like multicolored spots in his eyes after Prompto’s camera flash went off. He watched helplessly as the flask wobbled like a curveball, sucked into the giant’s sudden gravita attack. The arc of the throw totally changed, now following that same unnatural gait that the giant did, even as Noct felt himself being sucked in as well.

He wasn’t certain what happened first, in retrospect. The force of hitting the asphalt face first, the heel of his boot sucking off his foot and touching the vortex, or the thundaga spell blooming violently out of the flask. Maybe it was all instantaneous. Maybe it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it _hurt_ like hell before unconsciousness grabbed him and dragged him away.

***

Salt. Salt and water and the thin, high cry of sea birds, and the press of cold rock against his face. With a groan, Noct pushed himself upright on one stiff and shaking arm, the other bent underneath him to support his weight. His entire lower half felt numb with cold, and no wonder; his legs were dangling off the edge of a slope of rock, drenched in icy water.

Fighting down a wave of nausea, he finally managed to get to his feet, sloshing water as he went. Boots squelching uncomfortably, he took in his surroundings. Which….weren’t much to look at. A slate gray sky, with worrying flashes of lightning over the horizon. A spit of rock no bigger than the Regalia, holding up him and a couple battered pillars, ruins in a style he’d never seen before. Not even close to Solheimian architecture, not at all. (Ignis, in the back of his mind, said, “ _Entirely wrong aesthetic_.”) And surrounding him on all sides, that frigid sea that was still making his legs numb.

“Gladio! Ignis! Prompto!” His own voice took him by surprise, hoarse and tight and sounding far too frightened for a prince. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and tried again. “HEEEEEEEEY~!”

The only answer was the scolding screech of a nearby seagull, flapping its coral pink wings accusingly and taking to the air.

….Pink feathers. Some kind of birdbeast or daggerquill he’d never seen before? Huh.

He took another breath and sat down, head in hands. He was on a literal deserted island in the middle of the ocean, and not one of his friends was in shouting distance. If they’d even survived his ham-handed tossing of an elemental spell he hadn’t meant to.

“If anything happens to them, it’s all my fault,” he groaned to himself, scrubbing his fingers through his hair. “Shit.”

Frustration brought one fist down on the stone, and then he paused, did a slow, princely double-take. The stone he was pouting all over wasn’t rough or natural. No. He was on a mosaic-tiled floor, patterned with bug-eyed sea creatures and eight tentacles in a circle. The ruined pillars were spaced just far enough apart to look like….he looked again.

A walkway. A raised bridge along the ocean, lined with pillars, and now crumbled into ruins. On his hands and knees, he inched to the water’s edge, peered down. Even in the gloom, even through the choppy motion of the waves, he could make out the continuation of the path along the sea floor, a broken and wavering and watery illusion, suggesting movement where there was none. His eyes followed it along, and up, and out, and there.

Lurking just past the horizon, shrouded in mist and circled by dozens of birds, were more ruins. A hump of some sort of temple, maybe, with a half-collapsed dome roof. It was hard to make out in the thick ocean air, as difficult to make out as the ocean floor. 

“Oh man, I hope you’re real,” he muttered to the structure in the distance. A ruined temple might be on the mainland. Which gave itself to rescue a hell of a lot better than staying here on this weird man-made island. But that meant he was going to have to swim for it. With a groan, he reluctantly rolled himself into the sea, pushing off with one boot against the ruins. Nothing moved in the surprisingly clear waters beneath him, and thank god for that. He preferred to tackle his sea creatures with a fishing pole, rather than with a sword.

His arms and legs were completely numb by minute seven of his swim, but he kept pushing. The alternative was just giving up. He was the crown prince of Lucis and he was _not giving up._

It took him the better part of an hour to get there, never having been more thankful for Gladio’s ridiculous, over-the-top training sessions. The ones that pushed him to the limits of his endurance, and then shoved him off the edge. Drenched, shivering, and lips an ugly shade of blue, Noctis finally got his feet under him again, at the base of the ruins. Crumbling stairs and pathways intertwined like plaited hair, an odd geometry that had once had a logical whole. The ruins formed concentric circles around the main bulk of the temple, a bullseye that had crumbled in random spots. Sea and stone and sea and stone. Whoever had built this temple _really_ wanted everybody to know what the important part was.

He was panting and shivering by the time he climbed up the stairs to the walkway level. His eyes traced the path that still existed, and he thought that maybe he could pick his way across, if he took his time.

Or.

He could just warp there.

There was an opening at the water level, a cave that wasn’t a cave, he could see the top of it even from where he stood. Perhaps once there’d been a carved stone arch over it, but now it was just a dark gash in the distant temple wall. And a perfect sort of ledge just calling his name. One good throw of his sword and he’d skip all that tedious, maze-like traversing of delicate stone.

The habit of a lifetime made his hand snap out into thin air, and he pulled the engine blade out of the armiger.

Or at least he tried to. It felt like plunging his fist into glass-strewn treacle that was also on fire. He bit back a shriek of pain as the sword materialized in his fist, crystallizing into reality with a snap that echoed through the hollows of his bones, and made his head throb. He sank to his knees, propping himself up on the hilt of his sword, and tried not to throw up. It was a close contest.

If just pulling his sword out of the armiger produced this reaction, there was no way in hell he was risking a warp. Although the stubborn part of him, the little voice in the back of his head that was _royalty_ , and thus special, insisted that he try it.

Nope. Not here. Not now. 

The habit of a lifetime almost made him toss his sword back into the armiger, and he stopped himself at the last possible second. Whoops. He never realized just how much he took that magic for granted. So, carrying the sword in one hand, he made his way across the delicate stone and tile.

At about the halfway mark, he had to double back at a dead end, where a hole had been smashed through the stone. A minute of hunting found a pillar that had fallen across the raised path to the next concentric ring. Which of course meant that it had come from above….how had this place even looked, once upon a time? He tried to visualize it as his feet picked their steps carefully. That weird tentacle motif was everywhere here, too. Dozens of cold, fishy eyes stared out from slabs, along with the outline of some strange, pillar-like creature with folded wings. It strongly resembled a fly-trap, if those had beady little eyeballs running along the lips of its leaves. 

“Creepy,” he said, inspecting one fresco. He shuddered and moved on.

The sensation of being watched slid over him like a raw egg cracked over his head, and he put it down to the carvings. He was almost to the cave opening into the temple (at least that’s what he hoped it was) when he heard a heart-stopping crack.

The stone beneath his feet gave way.

It happened so fast he couldn’t even react, not even to attempt an ill-advised warp. He was plunged back into that icy water, and he rolled himself into a ball to avoid getting hit by more falling rock. His sword barely stayed in his hand, but it stayed. When all had settled, he let himself surface, gasping for air as he did. Shit.

The only warning he got was a churning of water beneath him, and then several creatures exploded to the surface. He got an impression of scales, and fins, and weird elongated bodies, almost human in their shape. At least, he’d never seen a fish with two arms and two legs, even if those legs did end in flippers. His sword was up and ready in a flash, and managed to sever one fishy limb from a fishy torso with one blind sweep. He was at a decided disadvantage here, with no solid ground under his feet. There was no answer to his dilemma as they rushed him, but he got enough wild swings in to make the creatures back off. Just enough. He ran for it.

Or rather, swam like hell for it. With his waterlogged clothes and boots weighing him down, and his sword a deadweight on his right arm, he did his damnedest. The things were toying with him, a game of cat and mouse. Or weird fish things and delicious human. His lungs were on fire as he struggled, went under. His slow crawl turned into a slightly quicker breaststroke, salt water stinging his eyes, flippers slapping his face as he made his desperate way to the opening.

Which was a mistake. The creatures surrounding him suddenly stopped, frozen in space, and then as one turned tail and swished away in the opposite direction. Because the big fish in the little pond appeared. It was….huge. Bulbous. Almost skeletal, tight skin across impossibly thick rib bones, with bioluminescent fronds waving from its beaked head and its almost comically tiny flippers. How did that thing move around?

Even underwater, its roar made Noct’s head ring and his vision dim, and he realized it didn’t really need to move around all that much. It roared, stunned its prey, and then dined to its leisure. Blinking back the cobwebs, he saw the thing getting closer. Too close. And he was exhausted, out of breath, and unable to go any further. Fuck it.

Throwing his last hope away, he used the last of his strength to attempt a point warp.

It was like getting his sword out of the armiger, times about a million. His entire body, already pushed to utter exhaustion, felt like it was squeezed through the wringer of one of Ignis’ pasta making machines. He felt thin and elastic and pulled in all directions at once, and he couldn’t even open his mouth to scream. And then it was done, and he was dangling by one hand just above the temple entrance. So. He could warp. It just put him through hell if he attempted it.

Black flowers blossomed at the edges of his vision, as his sword slipped out of the rock it was wedged into. He fell back into the depths with only a vague notion that he should fight harder, before his brain gave up and abdicated its responsibilities. At the edge of his hearing, he could make out the creature roaring again, causing a mini tsunami as the pressure built, the water bearing his body further into the temple, and brought down more rock and detritus. That was when his brain and body ganged up on him, told him they were going on strike, and he was out again.

***

Another coming to, this one just as wet and cold and miserable as the last. The big difference was how pitch freakin’ black it was now in this ruined temple. Part of him had half-assed hoped that he’d wake back up in the Regalia, or something. No such luck. Groaning to himself, he snapped on his lapel torch, bathing the temple’s interior with the bright white glow of his LED. His sword lay next to him, thank every single Astral. He picked it up and regained his feet, moving deeper into the ruins.

The only sounds were his breathing, and the distant lapping of water against stone. Inside, the temple was just as weird as the outside, if not more so. It was a huge, three-leveled place, round and echoing. It must have been a grand temple, once. He could make out those tentacle carvings and mosaics everywhere again, half hidden by who knows how many years of mud. And there were the watching eyes again, along with a giant fucking monster that half resembled a whale, and half resembled a catoblepas. Whales didn’t have horrible trunks for legs, anyway. The light reflected off the sheen of seawater that had permeated everything, dazzling and sparkling in his eyes.

“Just want this to be over,” he chanted quietly to himself, knowing full well that Gladio would kick his ass for that sentiment. But, hell, he’d been through worse? Right? He was having a hard time coming up with precisely what had been worse….oh. Well, okay, the morning he found out his father was dead definitely ranked up there in terms of emotional sucker punches, but this was more of a physical thing.

He was hungry on top of everything else, too.

There was evidence that this place wasn’t as ruined and abandoned as he’d thought; in the center of the main space was a clearing, and in that clearing was a bonfire ring. It wasn’t entirely burnt out, just charred heavily around the edges. Which meant…

Casting around, he tried to remember Gladio’s survival lessons. Kindling. He needed kindling, and a stone. He could probably make sparks striking his sword, right?

Ugh, why had he always let Gladio light their campfires?

The seawater had gotten into everything here, permeated every porous surface and crystallized. There were some large wooden beams, fallen from above who knows how long ago, shining with rock salt, but he instinctively knew they wouldn’t burn right. Too wet, still. But there were smaller pieces, dried out and dessicated by the salt, that would be perfect. He also found several small bones, still greasy but gnawed clean. The bones of one of those weird pink birds, maybe. A few scraps of ripped cloth, covered with moldy crumbs of long-gone breads. 

If this had been a camp for someone - or several someones - that would make sense. 

He gathered up all of the detritus that felt dry enough to burn, carefully arranged it in the middle edge of the pit. His progress was slow, due to the icy chill in his fingers and arms, but he got there eventually. Finally, he found a piece of flinty rock, harder than the red stone that made up the rest of the temple. Noct didn’t even question it. He figured it was left over from those who’d come before.

He propped the Engine blade against his stomach, pommel in his belly button, blade at a diagonal away from his hand and toward the bonfire. That way if he missed a strike he wouldn’t cut himself. It took a few practice swipes, but soon he was sending sparks flying into the kindling. He saw the tiny smolder, and quickly bent down to blow on it.

It caught.

The flames went up with a ‘whoomp’ (that almost singed his eyebrows), a deep turquoise blue that was as startling as it was hot. Somewhere in his past education, he heard Ignis say that sometimes fires could burn different colors when different chemicals were in the fuel. Like how neon turned different colors, in all the numerous tubes advertising this and that around Insomnia.

There was no time to feel homesick. He had to focus on surviving, and the fire was doing a damn fine job of pulling him into the present. As it cast weird, flickering shadows around the ruins, he held his chapped hands out, and almost cried with the sensation of heat leeching back into his frozen extremities. Part of him wanted to just crawl into the blaze like he’d crawl into a warm bed or a hot bath. Yeah, no, bad idea brain, cut that out.

Then his stomach gurgled loudly, reminding him that just because one physical need had been met, others were standing in queue, knocking not so politely on the door and demanding their time.

Placing his sword on the floor, Noct finally sat down a mere foot from the blaze he’d struck, and tried to think of his next move. He needed food, clearly. He needed to get out of this damn temple. He needed to find his friends, if they’d survived that weird blast of weird magic. He needed to figure out where on Eos he was!

And he had zero idea where to start.

Food topped the list, but aside from his sword he had no other weapons to hunt. He was half tempted to see if he could pull one of Prompto’s guns out of the armiger, but he was already weak from everything that had happened. The thought of plunging his fist back into that pain was not appealing. He had a feeling it would be the end of him, to be completely honest. He’d experienced stasis before, but only when his friends were at his side, able to bolster him up. Here and now, alone? It’d be suicide.

Falling into a sort of a haze, Noctis let himself doze sitting up, head nodding onto his knees. He really shouldn’t be sleeping alone by a fire, that was a good way to get in a lot of trouble, but...he’d been through so _much._ Too much. Aside from all the danger he was in, more than anything else…

He was lonely.

Once upon a time, he fought tooth and nail for solitude. For a place to call _his_ and his alone. Carving out some little wedge of privacy, away from the politics and public aspect of his life, out of the Citadel and into the city. Of course there were still bodyguards, and of course Ignis was there every day, but he had time and space to himself. A jewel beyond price. He’d never understood his father’s sadness about his demands, the slow nod of acquiescence. 

Right now? He’d give anything to have his friends back by his side. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d gotten used to them, always right there, in the car, in a tent, crammed into some low, stinking cave surrounded by daemons. The press of Gladio’s arm against his, Ignis’ hand on his shoulder. Hell, he’d even settle for Prompto slapping his ass playfully.

His head drooped lower on his knees, even as his stomach gave another painful gurgle, cramping against the emptiness. He could really go for some of Ignis’ cooking right now. He’d even eat beans! _Beans!_ That’s how desperate he was! If Ignis showed up right now and put an entire bowl full of plain beans in front of him, he’d eat every last one and ask for seconds.

He knew he was in trouble if he was fantasizing about beans.

There was no one particular thing that roused him. But suddenly his head snapped up, and he was on high alert. The fire was still crackling blue-green in front of him, so that wasn’t it. There was the steady susurration of the sea lapping the stone walls in the distance, and a low drip drip drip from somewhere above. But in amongst all those noises was something else, and his subconscious mind caught it.

He stood up, joints much more limber after their time in front of the fire, and picked up his sword. Fell back a few steps, his feet finding the proper fighting stance out of long-trained muscle memory. The Engine Blade glinted silver-blue in the firelight, and he turned his head just a fraction of a degree up. 

There. On the gallery above.

It wasn’t a daemon. He knew that right away, because it moved out of the shadows and toward the firelight. No daemon would ever do that. But it was unlike any other beast he’d ever seen. It moved on six ant-like legs. Bulbous rear, nipped waist, segmented front. But that was where the similarities ended, because ants weren’t eight and a half feet tall. At least, not outside schlocky horror movies. Ants also didn’t have greasy, hair-like growths out of the top of their heads. And ants most certainly did not have forelegs that tapered off into deadly, blade-like things.

Whatever this creature was, it screamed an unholy sort of scream as it launched itself off the crumbling upper balcony, directly into the bonfire.

Noct fell back yet again, sword raised, as the creature scattered the burning logs in all directions. The light was now coming from multiple angles, giving Noctis a better view of the ruins. Not that he had the time to look at anything but the monster advancing on him. It was fireproof, apparently, and was just as hungry as Noctis was. Its eyes glinted a disturbing blue-white as it advanced, and Noct barely had time to raise his sword to parry the natural blades the thing wielded. Recovering quickly, he swiped at it with the tip of his sword, trying to force it back. It hissed and retreated momentarily, eyeballing him with a sort of preternatural intelligence.

And then it was back at him again, and he had to defend himself for real. He lost track of every slash, every parry, as he settled into the zen-like place of a fighter. There was no time to be scared, no time to worry, he just had to be right in the moment. Gladio had drilled that into his head over and over since he’d been twelve years old. Eight years later, it was second nature. Even against a beast that he knew for a fact was not indigenous to Eos. That was a small, quiet thought in the back of his head as he took a flying swipe at the thing. He couldn’t warp out of the way, after all, so he had to rely entirely on his own innate agility.

Which was better when he had enough calories in his system to sustain him. He made sloppy mistakes, and was scraped up to all hell and back for his troubles. Only flesh wounds, but they still stung and made him bleed. But the creature was definitely in worse shape. When he allowed a snap visual second to sink in, he saw that its carapace was scarred heavily from his sword, and it was already missing a leg. He was winning, in spite of his exhaustion.

Of course, that was when doors he hadn’t even seen (it was too dim even with the fire) blew open along the far back wall of the temple.

The creature screeched again, backed up just a little bit. Noct’s eyes were dazzled by the scattered blue fire, the orange-white flash that had taken out the door. He could vaguely make out a few humanoid figures silhouetted against the gloom, and one stepped forward, cracking her knuckles as she went.

Yes, it was definitely a female figure, petite and slender, several inches shorter than he was. (And he wasn’t exactly Gladio-sized. Hell, he wasn’t even Ignis-sized.) She had on a weird getup, almost like a wetsuit, with goggles covering half her face, her corn-yellow hair spilling over in tight, spiky-short braids. She stood at his side, and tossed something in his direction. Automatically he caught it, and he stared.

It was a potion. He’d recognize that bottle anywhere, glowing green with healing magic. Without a second thought he used it, squeezing it just so until it smashed, liquid dripping down and covering him in a temporary shimmer. His cuts disappeared in an instant, and even the pressing hunger pains faded from his middle.

“You’re helping me?” he asked stupidly, which didn’t even rate a response. “Thanks.”

The woman shrugged, and then squared up against the monster. The next thing she threw was definitely not a potion, though. As the orb left her hand, Noct flinched a bit, thinking it was a spell, but it just turned out to be a grenade.

Holy shit.

The grenade burst at the creature’s feet, blowing off one of those blade legs, which twitched uselessly as it hit the floor. His savior then pointed two fingers at Noctis, and at the beast, a clear _’GO’_ signal. 

Oh. Oh!

After only one second’s hesitation, Noct leapt forward, slashing down with all his strength, and severing the beast’s head. He flipped back, landed on his haunches, waited for the body to fall. It didn’t. Instead, it started dissolving. Disappearing into dozens of points of light, which wriggled and scattered into the sky, leaving odd rainbow trails behind them as they went, slowly fading from sight.

….Okay. That was new.

He was still blinking at the afterimages of the fight, trying to get his focus back, hands on his knees, sword at his side.

“Thanks,” he finally managed, glancing at the girl’s goggles. She regarded him coolly, the only sign of life the dying blue fire glinting off the glass. Suddenly, his scalp was screaming in pain as a hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head back.

Oh. Right. There were other people along with the woman. Out of the corner of his eye, Noct saw the flat, low glint of a blade at his throat, and he went very, very still.

“Fryd ec drec?” The voice was masculine, but Noct couldn’t understand a word he said. It was as if his ears were playing tricks on him. He’d never heard anything even close to that language in his life.

“Y veaht eh risyh teckieca!” Another voice, a second man. Whoever these people were, they really loved to wear goggles and wetsuits. ...Well, okay, understandable if they were spending time in the ocean. Fine. It was still creepy.

“Let me go,” Noctis finally managed, his voice low and dangerous. He was not going to be held prisoner by these people, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his throat get slashed. He was already trying to figure out if he could blink aside, sidestep out of the grip. A warp was out of the question, but a blink might not be so bad…

“Fyed!” That was from the woman who’d helped him, her voice high and youthful. Oh. Maybe just a girl? A kid? But then why would these men be listening to her? Whatever the reason, she stepped forward again, and snapped her goggles off her eyes and onto her forehead.

Her bright green eyes didn’t have pupils. They had black swirls, which looped the entire iris. He gasped and flinched back, startled by the inhuman nature of it, and the girl frowned at him.

“Fryd ev ra'c risyh?” That was addressed to the others in the group, one of whom laughed in an unpleasant manner.

“Drao'na dra cysa eh taydr.” That got a round of dark, malicious laughter from everybody except the girl, whose freaky eyes narrowed in disgust. She marched forward and slapped the blade at Noct’s throat away, shoved the one holding his hair back. Noctis used the opportunity to move away as quickly as he could, not daring to use his magic. But he did hold his sword up again, ready to defend himself. There was a moment of tension as they stood off against each other, and he met the girl’s eyes again. This time there was no flinch reaction from him, and her expression softened a bit.

“Tuh'd pa teckicdehk. Fa'mm pnehk res fedr ic. Caa ruf ra'c tnaccat? Mega dra udran uha.”

That got a grumble from all the others, but they all stood down, turned their backs and trooped back out the door they’d just blown open. That left Noctis staring at this strange girl, who tilted her head at him. She wasn’t frowning anymore, but she did snap her goggles back down over her eyes.

“Vummuf,” she said, as if that was something somebody could understand. She turned and walked away as well, before pausing and turning back to him. Even with the goggles in the way, he felt rather than saw her impatient eye roll. Then she made the universal ‘come the fuck on, man’ gesture, one arm waving quickly. 

Well. She’d helped him kill that monster, whatever it was, and had given him a potion, got her buddies to back off. He really didn’t have much of a choice, did he?

Lowering his sword, he followed.

***

_Below the waves, it dreamed without sleeping._

_Like ripples through a still pond it moved, altering the shape of its world with an idle thought, passing through water as sunlight does. Inexorably there, fading slowly and then surfacing again, sparkling and shining brilliant rays on that which was best left in the dark. It kicked up filth as it moved, as it dreamed, each particle of muck a screaming memory of the past, before each individual voice was folded back into the general miasma of horror._

_It had a name, once. It had been human, once. It could not bear to remember that name. A name like golden light, swallowed now by the darkness._

_Another voice called to it through the mire, and it ignored the call. For now._

_There. One, two, three, four. Four darkly brilliant spots, snagging on the fabric of the world, its warp and weft puckering around the presences that didn’t belong. Scattered but close, closer than they knew, and separate._

_Five._

_It hesitated in its dream, as the fifth appeared. If the first four were snags, this was a fully dropped stitch, and it howled silently in frustration. That fifth presence was definitely not to be tolerated, not in this dream._

_Like a jeweler precisely plucking one diamond out of a pile of thousands of pieces of glass, it snagged a voice that it knew, somehow it knew. And it thrust it into the world that it dreamed, at the place it knew it would do the most good._

_It was done._

_It fell back into its sleepless dream, ignoring the clarion call to destroy destroy destroy destroy destroy…._


	2. Chapter 2

Okay. Okay okay okay cool cool cool alright alright. Sure. This was fine. Like that one meme cartoon dog that was sitting in a fiery room. This was _fine._ He had no weapons and he had no camera and his friends were nowhere to be seen so it was A-OK peachy keen and dandy.

In the back of his head, he could hear Noct’s voice. _”Prompto, chill!” “Do I really seem like the ‘chill’ type to you?!”_

He was sitting on the herringbone metal deck of what looked like a gunship, surrounded on all sides by a choppy and unforgiving sea. Well, the ship was. _He_ was surrounded on all sides by a bunch of big, burly dudes wearing goggles and weird clothes who had rifles pointed at his head. Actual rifles, with actual bayonets on the front. Who did that? Who actually still put bayonets on rifles?

These guys, apparently. Who were gabbling at him in a weird language he didn’t understand and prodding him none too gently into standing up. One of the bayonets actually bit into the back of his shoulder and he yelped.

“Hey! Watch it, don’t scratch the merchandise, pal!”

It was entirely involuntary, his mouth leaping ahead of his brain as he tried to figure out how he’d even gotten here. He remembered an iron giant and the crack-boom of a thundaga spell, but other than that, things got awful fuzzy. He was shoved into the center of the ship, knees shaking as he went, until he was face to face with….a girl. Just a few inches shorter than him, also wearing those goggles and weird zip-up coveralls that the rest of the dudes had on. She tilted her head at him, as if curious.

“You speak?” she finally asked, the first time he understood a word anybody was saying, and he almost melted in surprise.

“Yes?” he asked in a squeak, glancing around nervously at his captors. The girl grunted in satisfaction, and nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Prompto.”

“Rikku,” she answered in return, still studying him. When two gloved fingers reached forward toward his vest, he involuntarily flinched back, only to be rewarded with another pointed jab from behind.

“Ow! C’mon, man, I’m not a pincushion.”

That got a little giggle out of the girl, who finally snapped off her goggles and draped them over her neck. She was cute. She was _young._ And yet all these crazy rifle-loving lunatics seemed to take her as their commander. Oh shit, he was on some weird erotic pirate ship or something.

She reached forward again, and this time he didn’t shy away. Her fingers pinched the hem of his vest and gave it a tug, as if she’d never seen anything like it before. Same with the tank-top he had on underneath, the buckle of his belt.

“Whoa, whoa, bad touch,” he joked as she prodded there. She rolled her eyes and batted his hands away with the back of her hand, but she was still grinning. It wasn’t until she reached for the band around his wrist that he really backed off. “Hey. No. Leave that alone.”

“Why?” That got a chuckle from the ring of enforcers around them, and he scowled.

“Because I said so!” he finally snapped.

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” said Rikku, backing off entirely. With a simple wave of her hand, suddenly the guns and the guys were gone, and they were given some relative privacy. The others were still in earshot, just in case, but he wasn’t being held at gunpoint anymore. A vast improvement.

“So how’d you get on our ship, anyway?” the girl asked, arms across her chest.

“I have no idea,” he answered, still staring around at the incongruous ocean, the weirdo random ship. “I just...I just woke up here.”

Which was true. He’d been unconscious on a pile of random burlap sacks below the deck, and then hands were grabbing his arms, and he was frog marched up a stairway, guns everywhere and aimed at his head, before he was thrown down on the deck of the ship. It had been a very busy last ten minutes, frankly.

“Did you stow away in Luca? After we dropped off our Blitzball team?” she accused, and he just blinked at her.

“I don’t know what that is?” he answered, his voice trailing into a question at the last second. Luca sounded like a place, and Blitzball sounded like a sport, and what the _actual fuck_ was going on?

The girl regarded him for a long moment, head still cocked to the side, eyes narrow.

“Where are you from?”

“Insomnia.”

“Never heard of it.”

His stomach dropped into his knees, and then slithered even further down into his feet, while his heart followed far too quickly. Never heard of Insomnia? The biggest city - okay, biggest _former_ city - in the world?

“What is this place?” He asked it knowing full well he wasn’t going to like the answer one bit, but he still needed to know.

“This is the Bikanel Sea,” she answered, as if it was helpful. “We’re about forty klicks northeast of the Baaj ruins, we should be there by tomorrow. We’re on our third raising and salvage mission, this one’s the big one.”

Prompto just blinked at the girl helplessly, before he thought of an answer.

“Um. I was with you right up until _‘This is the.’_ ”

The girl just scoffed again, and turned and walked away for a few paces. Then she turned back, rubbing her forehead with one hand.

“ _Drec ec cdibet._ Look, this is my first command! My old man is trusting me with this one. It’s a big deal and I just don’t have _time_ to deal with badly-dressed cute boys who pop onto my ship out of nowhere and then lie their lips off!”

“I’m not lying!” he finally shouted back, drawing too much attention. Guns were vaguely aimed in his direction again, but he was fed up. “Look! All I know is that I was fighting this giant monster with my friends, and there was a nasty flash of light and a boom and I woke up here! I don’t remember anything else!”

Rikku went very, very pale, and she blinked at him. He suddenly noticed that her green eyes were….weird. Instead of plain round pupils, she had spirals, swirled through her irises. Prompto found them oddly beautiful, and he couldn’t help staring for a second. Part of him wished he could get a macro photo of them. A little indirect lighting, maybe a filter over the lens...

Wait. She’d called him cute.

“You….you said a big monster?” she asked, suddenly hesitant. “And now you can’t remember anything?”

“Y-Yeah. Why?”

She breathed out, and a weird sort of calm settled on her, as if she’d figured out something very important and very relevant and made her feel more charitable toward him.

“I see. Okay. Well, until you can figure things out, you can stay here with us. If you don’t mind being around Al Bhed, of course.”

“What’re Al Bhed?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw those guns lowering again, as the other men saw that their commander wasn’t in immediate danger. And Rikku sighed again, a look of utter pity on her face.

“You poor thing,” she said, making a little ‘tsk’ noise behind her front teeth. “Must be bad. It’s okay. You’ll get your memory back eventually. People who are too close to Sin always act a little weird after.”

Part of him knew that asking what ‘Sin’ she was referring to would be….pointless. Stupid. Suicidal. And he had a feeling she wasn’t referring to anything the Cosmogony considered sinful, anyway. So he just nodded, shifting his eyes to the side guiltily as he gnawed on his lower lip. So Rikku grinned brightly, and gave him a gentle ‘pap’ on the shoulder with the flat of her palm.

“Tell ya what!” she said, immediately shifting to brighten the mood. “Let’s get you fed, first of all! And then when we get to the Baaj ruins, maybe you can help us!”

Her tone and attitude were infectious, and he knew what she was doing. After all, he was the reigning king (sorry, Noct) of forcefully bringing up the mood. He was all smiles and jokes and gentle teasing and happiness….and apparently that was what Rikku did, too. And that, more than anything else so far, was what got him to totally relax, and smile at her brightly.

“I never say no to food!” he said, matching her cheerful tone, to be rewarded with another giant, sunny smile from the girl. “At least, I don’t think I do. Since apparently I’ve got memory problems, according to you.”

That got her to laugh out loud. It felt good. And when she linked her arm through his and led him toward the galley, it felt even better.

***

The Al Bhed - whoever they were - turned out to be actually pretty cool, now that they weren’t shoving bayonets into his delicate freckled hide. They had some archaic weapons, sure, but their ship was top of the line by his estimation. As a crew, they seemed fairly tight-knit and suspicious of outsiders, but once an outsider was in? He was all in. They gave him a platter of spicy food (yum!), and a big bottle of fresh milk, and some ribald teasing which he didn’t understand, and which Rikku declined to translate. But she was yelling back at them in that same language, and she was blushing hot red. Prompto pretended he didn’t notice.

When he had a moment to himself in the latrine, he did try to pull his guns out of the armiger, but was alarmed to discover that he couldn’t. He knew that meant something had happened to Noct, but maybe not. He was beginning to realize that the explosion back home might have thrust him somewhere _new_. He probed at that idea like a tongue probing at a cavity, worried and painful. He refused to believe Noct was…. _hurt_ until he was given evidence to the contrary.

Only Rikku spoke his language, everybody else gabbled away in thick, foreign syllables that he couldn’t follow. When somebody caught him staring wistfully at one of the rifles, it was slapped into his hands, and the invitation to do a bit of target practice was clear in any language.

He could feel Rikku’s eyes on him as he took aim, not certain exactly how he felt about it. He absolutely had a thing for cute blondes, but she seemed a little young. Okay, a lot young. Maybe.

He hit six out of six bullseyes.

The praise washed over him in a strange language, and he felt himself buoyed by it. He held up the rifle that he’d been loaned, and pointed at it.

“What’s this?” he asked, his tone making the question clear.

“Nevma,” came the answer from an anonymous voice in the press of Al Bhed.

“Nevma,” he echoed, wrapping his lips around the unfamiliar syllables. And so it went. He’d point at a person, or a thing, and get the word shouted back in response. _Talg. Puyd. Cay. Cgo._ He learned names. Keyakku. Pnudran. Zysac. Pitto. They mangled his name, and it only got worse when he added ‘Argentum’ to the mix.

“You’re weird,” laughed Rikku in the mess hall below, as the sun went down, as a strong sort of drink was passed around. “You’ve got two names! Why do you have two names?”

“Why do you only have one?” Prompto countered. “Where I’m from, everybody has two names. Some people have three!”

“That’s so weird!” she insisted, gulping down a large draught from the communal mug, and passing it back to Prompto. He felt a weird sort of buzz hitting him, like he hadn’t felt in years. His place at Noct’s side as an official member of the Crownsguard meant he technically wasn’t allowed to drink anymore. But he doubted anybody would give a single fuck if he did, here and now.

“What’s this?” he asked playfully, pointing at the mug of what was clearly alcohol, leering at Rikku and waggling his eyebrows. She giggled dutifully, and took the mug back, raising it with a flourish.

“Jutgy!” she proclaimed with a big grin.

“That’s not a drink, that’s a sneeze!” he protested, causing the girl to collapse giggling, face first into the table they shared. Somebody plucked the mug out of her unresisting grip, and she flapped a hand at whomever was attempting to cut her off. Prompto couldn’t help his own giggles, couldn’t help his arm around the girl as they both stood to leave, staggering like a couple of drunks. Which they were.

“Hey,” she finally said, as they stood outside her quarters. She pressed herself up against him in the best-worst possible way, her arms around his neck. “So. You wanna crash here?”

“Rikku….”

“No hanky panky,” she said, her lips just mere centimeters away from his. And her tone of voice belied her next words. “I promise.”

“Uh…”

He apparently hesitated just a fraction too long, because Rikku was scoffing at him and gesturing down the corridor.

“What, you wanna go sleep in the hold like everybody else?” she teased, a mischievous grin on her lips. Prompto immediately shook his head. Everything was still kinda fuzzy from that jutgy he’d had. He wasn’t on the top of his game, clearly.

“No, I just...well, no.”

“Well then? Hurry up.”

And with that, she grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and he gave into the inevitable.

***

Rikku passed the binoculars back to her brother, and frowned. Prompto was nearby, helping to patch some of the wetsuits. It was easy work, but vital, and he was glad to do it. Although the look on Rikku’s face was not a good sign. There was a brief conversation he couldn’t follow, and then the ship started to swing around, closer to the ruins.

She jumped down off her perch and put one hand on the top of his head as she passed, a sort of an affectionate and possessive gesture. Prompto discovered that he really liked that, actually. Heh.

“Everything okay?”

“Mm. Keyakku said he saw lights in the temple...and he was right. Something’s in there. We’re going to check it out.”

“Want me to come with you?”

She gave him a little grin, and shook her head.

“You’re sweet, but I’ll be fine. You just stay here and keep your feet dry. You’ll get to do the dirty work later, ruhao.”

He didn’t know what that word was, but he guessed it was a term of endearment. Huh. Well, hell. He leaned into her hand, and then rested the side of his face against her thigh, and she rewarded him with a fond hair ruffle.

So when the raiding party set out, he wasn’t worried. He knew first hand just how strong and kick-ass the Al Bhed were as a tribe. Whatever was setting fires in abandoned temples didn’t stand a chance. He was still up to his eyeballs in suit repairs when they returned not an hour later.

He stood up to catch Rikku’s eyes, trotting over to the gangplank where she and Keyakku and Brother were coming back aboard the ship.

And screeched to a halt.

“NOCT!”

Sure enough, Noctis Lucis Caelum was bringing up the rear, sword in hand, looking like death warmed over. His head snapped up in surprise, and then he was all but shoving Keyakku out of the way in his haste to get to Prompto. They hugged it out like a couple of shipwreck survivors, actually swinging each other around and hitting each other playfully as they did, talking over each other at a mile a minute.

“Holy crap, Prompto! You’re okay!” “Noct! I thought you were-...!” “I don’t think I’ve ever been-...” “Don’t you scare me like…” “Where the hell are we?”

That last question got Prompto back into the present, and he grinned sheepishly at Rikku, who was watching the unfolding reunion with one raised eyebrow. And a smile. A smug sort of smile. Like she knew she’d been right about something, and was glad to be vindicated.

“Sooooo!” she drawled cheerfully. “Look at what we have here! You two know each other?”

Prompto just laughed, and reached over, hooked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Noct’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch.

“Rikku, this is Noctis. He’s, like, my absolutely best friend in the whole world and I was worried he’d been hurt. So, yeah. Thank you!”

“Uh huh.” Rikku was eyeballing them both now, but then she grabbed Prompto by the wrist and started dragging him away. He staggered for a moment, caught his feet, and looked back at Noct helplessly. Noctis just shrugged.

“Wanna try telling me again where you’re from?” Rikku’s voice was still cheerful, but there was a bit of steel behind it now, and Prompto huffed a sigh.

“I told you. Insomnia. It’s a city in Lucis.”

She frowned again, and then was beckoning Noctis over. The crown prince went, looking utterly bemused by this strange girl who’d not only saved his life, but apparently Prompto’s as well.

“Where are you from?” 

“...Uh. Well I’m from Insomnia, but…”

She held up a hand to stop him, frowning even deeper this time. It was very interesting to see the way her nose scrunched up when she was thinking, Prompto found it kind of adorable. 

“Okay,” she said, half to herself. “Easy way to solve this. C’mon, both of you.”

The double-time march up to the bridge of the ship brought more confused glances between Noctis and Prompto, and it wasn’t until she stopped them in front of a huge map on the back wall of the conn that they caught on.

“Point to Insomnia!” she said with a grand gesture, grinning at her own clever solution. But Noctis and Prompto weren’t grinning. As a matter of fact, they both were experiencing the same, sinking sensation. Because that map wasn’t of Eos. The shape was all wrong. No familiar names. No Lucis, or Cleigne, or Duscae….hell, Prompto would even be happy to see Niflheim on there. At the top of the map was a word in an unfamiliar script, barely legible. But even then, it was five letters instead of three. Definitely not Eos.

They stood there too long, staring this weird map down, and Rikku’s arm slowly lowered. And she was thinking hard again.

“You said,” she started slowly, looking at Prompto, “that you and your friends were fighting a giant monster? Were you there, Noctis?”

“Yeah.”

Rikku started pacing, tapping the back of her right hand into the palm of her left as she thought. And muttered to herself in Al Bhed, too. Prompto caught every sixth or seventh word, maybe. It was still mostly just a babble. Then she rounded on Prompto, and jabbed her forefinger into his sternum, which made him flinch back.

“You didn’t fight Sin at all, did you?”

“I….no. I don’t even know what Sin is.”

Rikku’s green eyes went dark, and she was pouting now.

“You lied to me!”

“I didn’t!” he protested in alarm. “You just sort of….assumed.”

“Ugh!” She threw her hands up in disgust, or maybe frustration, and started pacing the room again. “You don’t know what Sin is, you can’t point to Insomnia, you….”

And then the girl stopped pacing, as a truly audacious concept dawned on her. She slowly turned back to Noctis and Prompto, eyes wide and mouth slightly open.

“Oh. Oh, my.”

Noctis and Prompto exchanged a glance, totally confused. Well, maybe not totally. Only slightly. Because Rikku had come to the same conclusion that they both had, even if they were resisting and denying it with every single breath. But the evidence was mounting.

“You’re not from Spira, are you?”

And there it was.

It came out in a rush, both boys talking over each other (well, Prompto talking over Noctis, who rolled his eyes impatiently), as Rikku continued to stare at them. When she finally put a gentle hand over Prompto’s mouth to shut him up, Noctis followed suit.

“Okay. Wow. Uh. Listen, I think it’s best if we didn’t….tell anybody this.” Rikku glared at them both, an intense look of concern on her face. Prompto found it adorable, too. “It’ll be our secret for now. If anybody asks, you’re from Luca, and you got too close to Sin. And then maybe we can figure out how to get you back home to Insomnia.”

“Thanks, Rikku,” Prompto said, his voice still muffled by her palm, and she giggled as she stood back. Then, just because she could, she ruffled Prompto’s hair.

Noctis caught on half a second later, and raised an eyebrow at his best friend, who had the good grace to blush a little under his scrutiny. Rikku raised an eyebrow back at Noctis, as if daring him to say it. The prince just shrugged. 

“C’mon,” she said when the moment had passed. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Noct groaned in abject relief. Prompto wondered if Noct would actually eat the vegetables for once in his life.

***

“It’s...really colorful.”

Noctis sounded dubious, and looked like a clownfish just threw up all over him. Prompto snickered behind his own gloved hand, knowing full well that his own wetsuit was just as eye-scorchingly bright. Which, he supposed, was a practical consideration. Easier to spot orange and yellow in the murky depths of the ocean.

Which they were about to dive into. His scuba apparatus was hella cool, too. A simple metal bar that slotted into his mouth, and a membrane that extended to his nose and chin. He itched to take it apart and find out how it worked. Maybe after they were done _hauling an old airship out of the water._

That was, by the way, the coolest thing he’d ever heard of, let alone partook in. Rikku had shown him and Noct some sketches of what the thing had looked like in its prime, and it was _sweet._ Of course, when she said it had been down there for over a thousand years, he was kinda like, shocked. Wasn’t saltwater super corrosive? There was probably nothing left of the thing, after all this time. But Rikku assured him that it was intact, salvageable, and would fly again.

That sounded fake but okay.

He adjusted his goggles over his eyes, just as Rikku came up behind him, and playfully slapped his ass. He yelped and jumped, as expected, and her grin was very wide as she adjusted her goggles and stepped to the side of the ship.

Noct rolled his eyes and spoke in a low undertone, so Rikku wouldn’t hear. “Dude. She’s like….fourteen.”

“Fifteen, actually. Just like Iris.”

Prompto felt vindicated when Noct’s cheeks turned red.

“Okay, so it’s not active now,” Rikku said, pulling on her thick gloves, peering down into the dark of the ocean. “But there’s a control panel right about midship. We go down, we activate it.”

“Light it up?” asked Noctis, still plucking at his offensively-colored wetsuit. Rikku fluttered her fingers over his, a clear indication he should stop fussing already.

“Yup! Once the lights are on, we can clear any debris more easily, and salvage the big prize.”

“An actual airship,” said Noct, a flat sort of disbelief showing on his face. But Prompto was still grinning.

“Ain’t nothing like a Niff ship,” he said with an expansive gesture. “This thing is gorgeous.”

“What’s a Niff?” asked Rikku.

“Uh. Niflheim. Niffs. They’re, uh.”

He trailed off, not sure how to explain a war that had spanned generations and continents on their old world. And that Niff was a nasty Lucian pejorative. Prompto was an outsider among the Al Bhed, but he was really sensitive to that kind of thing, and was getting the idea that Al Bhed weren’t exactly a powerful force in Spira. Outsiders. The kind of people that would have nasty nicknames among the rest of the populace. Noct just tilted his head.

“It’s just a word,” he said, but underneath that was a small curl of shame as his thoughts paralleled Prompto’s. Rikku frowned.

“Right,” she said, giving Prompto a look of sour disappointment, and he blushed. Welp. “Get your breathers on. Noctis, you can use that sword. Prompto….here.”

A harpoon gun was put in his hands, as she pulled it from a nearby munitions cabinet. There were several wicked looking barbs set into it, and a length of steel cable. He’d reel ‘em in, Noct would take ‘em out. 

“Cool. What’re you gonna….? Oh.”

Rikku was pulling on two fist weapons that made her look like a comic book character, even if the claws were only three inches long. On her, they looked amazingly deadly and wickedly sexy. Prompto was beginning to feel like he’d never stop blushing around her. He distracted himself by hoisting his new weapon over his shoulder and putting on his breather.

“No radio?” he asked, his voice muffled by the metal bar.

“What’s that?”

“...Never mind.” Interesting. No cell phone use, no radios, it was as if this world was fundamentally backwards when it came to technology. Except this ship was excellent, and they were salvaging something from the bottom of the ocean, and the inherent contradiction was making his head hurt.

Noct was wrinkling his nose under the membrane mask, adjusting to the weird, clingy sensation, even as Rikku jumped feet-first into the ocean.

Geronimo.

The shock of water hitting his body was muffled by the excellent protectives he wore, and Rikku was already descending as Noct jumped in next to him. He could see Rikku’s suit glowing greenly under the water, and glanced down at himself. Yup. He was glowing too, and so was Noct. Sweet. As the water closed over his head, the breather kicked in, and he had to take a moment not to freak out at the powerful suction against his lips. And then they were going down.

He wondered if he was going to have to worry about getting the bends.

Too late to worry about it now. Yikes.

 _The water, it goes on, forever on and on….on and on and on…._ he hummed to himself as they kicked lower. He could feel the tides even underwater, idly pressing against him in this direction and that. There were a few schools of fish, dull silver and flashing occasionally as they got too close to the glowing humans. A few of them even grabbed Noct’s attention, turning his head to inspect them as they went past. Heh. Noctis Lucis Caelum, Chosen King of Kings, was distracted by fish.

Not too distracted, though. A strange, armor-plated sort of school aggressively started swimming toward the big, fat, silvery fish and the lovely glowy humans highlighting them. Prompto saw their teeth before he saw the rest of the damn things. He reacted even before Noct could, unhooking his harpoon gun and firing off an epic shot. A stream of small bubbles followed the path of the spear, and another stream of bubbles followed it back, this time with a writhing tooth-fish hooked on the end. Noct sliced it in half - helpfully freeing Prompto’s harpoon - as he moved to the next one. Rikku even doubled back and made very toothy sashimi out of another one.

And then it was over. Down and down and down they went. Soon, all Prompto could see was tiny, white, floating specks illuminated by his glowsuit, and inky blackness below. If he turned his head, he could make out Rikku and Noct, their outlines glowing but their faces a dark blur.

Don’t panic, Prompto. Don’t. You can’t get claustrophobia in a wide open sea. It’s impossible. What you’ve got is agoraphobia. Or. Wait, no, isn’t that fear of rabbits? Angoraphobia. Nope. Don’t panic don’t panic….

Rikku vanished.

The panic welled up in his chest before he saw Noctis do the same, and then his eyes stopped playing tricks on him, down here in the cold and wet. The glow that was Rikku was still there, just getting fainter as she vanished behind a wall of some sort. A wall? Oh! There was a broken window, and there was a corridor, and there was….

The outline of the airship finally became clear to him, and he craned his neck up and to the right. Whoa. Holy smokes, that thing was _epic._ The sketches didn’t do it justice. This thing could easily fit a dozen Nif-...Niflheim drop ships and still have room left over for every member of the Kingsglaive.

He hustled to catch up, legs kicking as he ducked through the broken window. Every surface of the ship was covered with silt, and barnacles, and the occasional patch of wavery seaweed. There was absolutely no way in _hell_ it would fly again, in his personal opinion. Unless the Al Bhed had some serious tricks up their sleeves. (Which….they might?)

The corridor was cramped, after the frightening blackness of the ocean, and it was weirdly comforting and oddly triggering. Like, relief followed by a massive freak out uh oh. Why was he doing this again?

Rikku waved to him, beckoning him closer. Ah. Right.

She pointed at a dark panel set into the wall, that was covered in cracked glass, and he blinked. Whoa. A touchscreen? He was there in a flash, as Noctis stood (swam) guard. He and Rikku fiddled with some stuff, nudged some surprisingly intact wires around, and there was a gentle sort of ‘fzzt’ as the console flared to life. It was almost blindingly bright in the gloom, and all three of them had to blink for a moment to clear their vision. Rikku’s fingers were flying over the screen a moment later, but Prompto was the one to point out the bright green rectangle in the corner. It just looked promising.

With a touch, the entire interior was alight, and even Noct’s eyes went wide in amazement. The airship was even more stunning on the inside, a marvel of ancient engineering. Rikku swam about fifteen feet down the length of the corridor, her fingers tapping against her thumb as she went. Counting something. With an excited kick of her legs, she found what she was looking for in the floor, and pulled up a hidden hatchway, leading to an even more cramped space below. She waved the boys over to follow.

Prompto’s moan of dismay was lost to pressures of the ocean.

They could all wiggle and kick their way through the cramped tube, surrounded by wires and piping and the guts of the magnificent ship. But it was a damn tight squeeze. He was glad they didn’t have to carry traditional scuba tanks on their backs, they never would have fit. The abject relief he felt when the tube opened into a large, cylindrical space almost made him slump.

Noctis did slump, letting himself drift to the bottom of the space and put his back to the wall. Prompto was there a second later, peering at him through their goggles, a hand on his shoulder. Noct nodded a second later, ready to continue. Rikku, meanwhile, was already floating up and into the center of the cylinder, where a strange sort of globluar thing was wired into a mesh cage. It was about the size of a beach ball, fully inflated of course, and crackled with what looked like elemantic particles. 

Prompto nudged Noctis and pointed at it. Was it or was it not like a giant thundaga flask? Noctis’ eyes went wide, and he nodded slowly. Huh. Interesting. 

Rikku was beckoning him up again, so he went, and between the two of them managed to reconnect every single red and blue wire that had come loose over the last one thousand years. Her fingers were nimble and quick, even in the chill of the ocean, and Prompto was once again kind of falling for her. Cute, blonde, good with machines….yup. He definitely had a type. Alas, poor Cindy. He’d have to send her a condolences card, or something. _Sorry I dropped my crush on you?_ Yeah, uh huh, like she’d actually mind that. Oh well.

Focus.

If the dazzle before was blinding, it was a mere blip compared to now. It was as if the sun had somehow dipped below the waves, casting no shadows because it was too brilliant and too everywhere. For miles around, Prompto could see the bottom of the ocean now, could see all the slithering and swimming creatures that withered under the light and fled from it, could see the vegetation waving in invisible tides.

Rikku did a little weightless victory dance, body spinning and wiggling in excitement. She couldn’t vocalize her joy, so she got it out another way. Prompto couldn’t help the grin on his face, distorted by his breather but still visibly there. Even Noct looked impressed, if tempered by his usual, cultivated indifference. They’d accomplished a major goal, and it felt damn good.

What didn’t feel so great was the horrible giant squid that blocked their path as they regrouped to exit.

Prompto kicked himself back, darting in front of Noctis automatically, because that’s what Crownsguard _did._ And he got off a shot with his harpoon gun. It landed and hooked, sure, but in one of those slimy tentacles. Ew. And of course the thing jerked back, aaaaaand now Prompto had no weapon. Awesome.

Things got a little blurry after that, images warped by bubbles and distorted by displaced water and swinging weapons. Prompto saw Rikku kick off the back bulkhead and torpedo herself right into the squid’s stupid beaky face, which shouldn’t have been a turn on, but there he was. Noct was slicing away, like the world’s most incompetent calamari chef, when Rikku tossed a phosphorus grenade. Even underwater, the concussive force of the blast pushed Prompto across the chamber and onto the sloped floor. Ah! There’s where his gun went! Victory fanfare and whatnot.

The squid was stubborn, but they were stubborner. That was totally a word. Rikku got in the killing blow, just shortly after Prompto got in the penultimate shot. It dissolved in a cloud of rainbow iridescent squiggles, which were frankly beautiful and weird and distracting. 

That distraction was 100% to blame for what happened next, if anybody asked Prompto’s opinion. Which they totally did not.

Rikku grabbed Prompto’s arm and pulled him closer, which he didn’t resist. He’d expected an underwater hug or a pat on the back. But….no. No, Rikku had her own priorities, which didn’t include the crown prince of Lucis getting out in one piece. Mainly because she had no idea, which was fair. 

Rikku and Prompto were huddled up against a leeward bulkhead as the underwater storm began. He couldn’t even warn Noct. No radio. No cell phones. Not even pre-arranged hand signals. He tried to kick himself loose from Rikku’s grip, but he might as well have told the sun not to come up. Her grip was inexorable, even in the weightless environment of the sea, and he turned to her in dismay. Behind her goggles, those green spiral eyes were wide with fear.

Prompto turned to where he’d seen Noctis last, and froze. Behind him was a horrible sort of mass, making its way toward them. It was dark and big and big and dark. It took up the entirety of his field of vision….and it seemed to hone in on Noctis, for some reason. Time slowed to a crawl as Noctis finally recognized the look on his best friend’s face, and spun slowly, suspended in salt water.

In spite of the breather locked onto his mouth, Prompto tried to scream anyway. 

“ _NOCT!_ ”

And then it all went blurry and indistinct.

When he came back to himself, he was laying flat on his back on the Al Bhed ship, gasping for air and ripping his breather off of his face. Rikku was there, trying against try to help him, gently peeling his breather off. Too fast, he sat up, making his head spin. And then, Rikku was pushing his hair off his forehead with a concerned expression and a tender touch.

“Noct!” he finally managed. “Where’s Noct?”

Rikku blinked, and ducked her head, looking away in shame.

“I….Prompto, I’m sorry.”

“No….”

He was already shaking his head in denial as Rikku knelt in front of him, a terrible, grief-stricken expression confirming his worst nightmares.

“It was Sin,” she murmured, already tearing up. “Sin attacked us. I’m….I’m sorry. I had to save our tribe. I couldn’t save Noctis.”

It was a low, flat, blank sort of mental bruise that spread across Prompto’s mind at that. It wasn’t possible. Noctis wasn’t dead. He’d just been here. Any second now, he’d pop up out of the ocean, that sardonic grin on his lips. He’d shrug, and be like, yeah, I’m fine. No problem. Everything is good, don’t panic, Prompto.

The moment came. The moment went.

Prompto sank to the deck of the ship, his butt numb and his mouth silenced. He didn’t even realize he was weeping until Rikku’s arms closed around his shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? You don't speak Al Bhed? Well there's a great translator [here.](https://stephenw32768.appspot.com/albhed/) Basically? Prompto and Rikku are drinking jugs of vodka. Which explains their lowered inhibitions.
> 
> And if you don't ship Rikku and Prompto you're absolutely in the wrong fic. Sorry not sorry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features brief, passing mention of suicidal ideation. Proceed with caution.

“Today, we’re gonna focus on our passing drills. You jokers need to _seriously_ work on your aim!”

“Aww, c’mon, Cap’n. Tournament’s next week! We did passing drills yesterday.”

“ _And_ the day before that. And the day before _that_.”

“...And you’ll _keep_ doin’ ‘em until you can hit the broadside of a shoopuf!”

A chorus of groans, only slightly muffled, rang out behind him as Wakka made his way through the cut, narrow path toward the beach. The gentle susurration of the nearby ocean couldn’t hide it, so he just ignored it. He supposed he deserved their groans; they couldn’t get into the water recently. Sure, it was _right there_ and a perfect practice pool for any blitzball team. But the outriggers from Kilika had sent word - well, sent rumor - that Sin was on the move again. Wakka had absolutely zero desire to see his entire team wiped out because they ignored that warning. Until they knew that the coast was clear….

Hell, even coming down to the beach was a risk. But the team wasn’t welcome to practice in the village anymore. Not after the second accidental fire.

Gods, they were a disaster. But they were his disaster.

He set the jogging pace to double-time, earning him another round of groans and whining, and he smiled grimly to himself. They might not be the best blitzball team on Spira, but at least they complained a lot to make up for it.

“What’s our goal?” he shouted back.

“To do our best!” came the breathless chant.

That went back and forth a few times, until they finally came to the open beach. Their equipment was still in the netting after yesterday’s practice, tucked up against the breaker wall at the back of the beach. No fiends had eaten them, bonus.

“Ten laps!” he suddenly barked. “Up to the cove and back, get moving!”

That got him the loudest groans yet, but already Jassu was pulling ahead. Jassu had the talent and the drive, and he - at least - was a solid offensive center. Too bad Wakka couldn’t just clone six more of him. So it was Jassu who suddenly skidded to a halt, about fifteen meters away from the curve of the cove, spraying sand everywhere.

“Hey, Cap’n?” he called nervously. “You better come see this.”

Crap. That never boded well. Putting on an extra burst of speed in the sand (tricky at the best of times), Wakka pulled up with Jassu and saw what he did.

At first, Wakka wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He was vaguely aware of the rest of the team huddling up behind him, as his brain tried to put what his eyes were seeing into some semblance of sense. It looked like a heap of colorful cloth, black peering through from under that; tangled in kelp, like a drowned thing.

Then he realized it _was_ a drowned thing and that thing was human. 

“ _Shit!_ Botta! Get a phoenix down!”

Wakka moved, sank to his knees next to the luckless drowned human. It was a boy, a few years younger than his own self. His skin was icy cold, but miracle of miracles, he was still breathing. There was the shredded remains of a wetsuit on him, which probably saved his life, and a strange film over his lower face. Carefully, Wakka rolled the boy onto his back and peeled that strange film off his nose and chin.

“....What the _fuck_?” he whispered, frozen in place.

It was Chappu.

Impossible. _Impossible._ Chappu. With black hair and pale skin but it was _Chappu._ Wakka knew his brother’s face, and this was _identical._ His heart bottomed out into his stomach as Botta returned from their supplies stash, phoenix down in hand. Wakka could only stare numbly, so Jassu took over, sprinkling the curative over the boy’s chest.

Who woke up with a gasp, legs and arms flailing uselessly before he settled back down. Midnight blue eyes struggled to focus on the ring of faces that surrounded him, and he groaned and fell back onto the sand.

“Hey,” said Wakka stupidly. “You okay?”

The boy just groaned again, lifting one trembling hand to cover his eyes from the glare off the ocean. His eyes finally landed on Wakka’s face, and Wakka was alarmed to note that the boy’s pupils were different sizes, which meant a concussion. Also the possibility of fluid in his lungs, considering he’d nearly drowned. (That was the problem with being the coach of a blitzball team. You got way too intimate with water-related injuries.)

“Who are you?” the boy croaked, his throat rough with exposure to salt water and possibly screaming for help at some point. “Where am I?”

“Y-You’re on the island of Besaid,” Wakka answered with a stutter at his mouth and in his heart. Because a small, screaming, grieving part of him had hoped that this boy with Chappu’s face would recognize him. No such luck. “What’s your name?”

There was a long moment of hesitation, as dark eyebrows furrowed. The boy licked his lips, and everything went a little hazy again as he tried to remember.

“I….I don’t know….”

Shit. _Shit._

“Practice is cancelled,” Wakka barked suddenly. “Letty, Datto, help me get him to the Temple.” When the rest of the team hesitated, Wakka’s patience snapped. “ _Double-time!_ ”

As the Besaid Aurochs got their (mostly missing) hustle on, Wakka led the way back toward the village. Because this boy was showing all the classic signs of an encounter with Sin. Which - it went without saying - was really really bad.

***

It shouldn’t have surprised Wakka that Luzzu wanted to talk. The Crusader was slouched inscousiently against one of the carved entryway pillars to Besaid Temple, arms over his chest, chin down. He wasn’t even looking in the direction of the double doors when Wakka stepped through, having left Chap-....the stranger in the hands of the nuns and their white magics. There was no cure for Sin’s toxin other than time, but they could at least bring his core temperature up, make sure his lungs didn’t collapse. Wakka’s mind whirled with the image of the boy being set down on the gurney, pale and twitching. He still had a sort of quiet dignity about him, though, one that Wakka couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“So,” Luzzu said, without even looking up. “Word is that boy was attacked by Sin.”

Wakka made a non-commital noise, awkwardly shrugging his shoulders and hunching them simultaneously. “I dunnow, maybe.”

“And that he was wearing an Al Bhed ocean survival suit.”

“He’s not Al Bhed!” snapped Wakka, perhaps a bit too hotly. “He doesn’t have the eyes.”

He knew exactly why that got him so defensive; he didn’t like the idea of his brother swanning off and joining up with those damn heathens and blasphemers. He knew that was a wholly unworthy thought, that Chappu would ever ally with the Al Bhed instead of coming home to Besaid. 

….No, Wakka. Face facts. Chappu was dead. Had been for years. He hadn’t gone anywhere except the Farplane.

Luzzu didn’t look surprised by Wakka’s outburst, didn’t flinch or even look up.

“I never said he was, just that he was wearing one of their wetsuits,” he said, his tone not changing a bit. “Were you able to get any sense out of him? Or is the toxin’s hold still too strong?”

“He didn’t even know his own name,” was the terse answer.

“Ah.”

There was a moment of silence as Wakka collected his thoughts. He’d never been good at the whole ‘compartmentalizing’ thing that Guardians were supposed to have a solid grip on. But then again, he’d felt half-assed as a Guardian anyway. He felt half-assed as a blitzball coach and player, come to think of it. Hell, the only thing in his life that he wasn’t wishy-washy on was his faith, and even that was a near thing. He missed his calling, he shoulda been a priest. Then maybe he wouldn’t have this quiet voice somewhere in the back of his head questioning and questioning and questioning. He could just be one hundred percent devoted to Yevon and perhaps then he’d find some peace.

Or perhaps not. He didn’t know, which was the _whole damn problem._

Chappu knew. Chappu chose. Chappu died.

“The tournament is soon,” Luzzu continued mildly. “You’ll be gone.”

“Yah.”

Wakka pretended to pick at his cuticles, not making eye contact. He had a feeling he knew what was coming, but he wanted to live in denial just a few seconds longer.

“He’ll need a sponsor if he stays in the village.”

“Yah.”

“Perhaps Lulu….?”

“ _No_.” 

Wakka shut that down before it could take root. Hell, he was hoping that Lu would never see this dark-haired stranger with Chappu’s face. She stayed out of the temple most of the time anyway, not that he could blame her for that. If the boy stayed in with the priests and Lulu stayed out, she’d never be the wiser.

Luzzu sighed, and finally looked up at Wakka. Their eye contact was so brief it might have been imagined. Then he looked away again, as Wakka went back to his cuticles.

“Look, the tournament’s only a couple weeks,” he said after a second, trying to ignore the fact that he sounded almost desperate. “I’ll come back and….uh.” 

He trailed off, prompting a questioning sound from Luzzu. It was entirely innocuous, and yet Wakka felt his resolve deflating. Quickly, he scrambled his justifications together, lined them up in his mind like he always did, pros and cons and pros and cons and….

“I mean, I guess I could sponsor. But….what if he turns out to be bad news, yah? Then it’s all my fault.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Luzzu pushed himself off the pillar and started walking away, shaking his head.

“You’ll talk yourself out of anything, won’t you, Wakka?”

It would have been less hurtful if Luzzu had just punched him in the gut. And more direct. The anger he always pushed down and ignored bubbled up, making his fists clench and tremble.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped. He never snapped. He was jovial and fun and the blitzball coach and the big dumb goofball from backwater Besaid. Wakka wasn’t _angry_. He was never angry. He wasn’t allowed. Already he was gulping, looking away, ashamed at his outburst.

Luzzu turned back just in time to watch all those emotions flick across Wakka’s face, and the older man frowned. But it wasn’t in annoyance or frustration or anger. It was….pity? Something like that, maybe.

“Never mind. Gatta and I will sponsor the boy.”

Relief and guilt flooded Wakka in equal measure. Relief and guilt and something much more nebulous, something much more dangerous. Something that whispered to him that letting Luzzu sponsor this boy would end in disaster. It felt like leaving a baby chocobo in the hands of a giant, chocobo-eating fiend and walking away, satisfied with a job well done. Monstrous, in other words.

“No,” said Wakka with a finality that he never really used. It felt good and terrifying all at once. “I’ll do it. He’ll be out of it for a while, probably. By the time I get back from Luca….”

“...Alright,” Luzzu said, interrupting gently. There was the hint of a smile on his face. “In the meantime, I’ll make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble while you’re gone. Deal?”

“...Deal.”

They even shook on it.

***

Besaid Village was nestled in a small valley of stone and dirt, ringed on all sides by protective mountains. There was land for farming, land for houses, land for livestock. But the majority of the village’s space was eaten up by the temple, smack dab in the middle of everything, larger by many magnitude of degrees than even the grandest hut. (Which was Lulu’s, of course.) The temple cast long shadows across the valley floor, as the sun went down on that stupendous day. Wakka walked through those shadows on his way to Lu’s place, delicate temple pillars and crenellations casting long, vertical stripes across the ground, and across Wakka’s skin.

One hundred and fifty two people lived in Besaid, and Wakka knew them all by name, from the very old to the very young. He organized youth tournaments for blitzball games, pitched in whenever a new hut needed to be built, dug in the dirt to raise hardscrabble tomatoes and corn and other sickly vegetables. He mended fishing nets and looked in on the elderly and babysat infants. Everyone did. That was how the village worked. Sure, they weren’t a major shipping point, like Kilika, or a stadium city like Luca, or an enormous palace-temple like Bevelle. But Besaid was _home_ in a way that no other place on Spira could hope to match.

Besaid hadn’t always been just in this tight little valley, according to the village elders. Over a thousand years ago, the entire island had been developed, one giant city sprawling over every square inch, even the vertical slopes of the river cliffs. Wakka tried to imagine it, filling in the crumbling ruins he knew all too well in his mind’s eye. It was impossible. Nobody could live like that, all packed in and in each other’s laps with their houses dangling off the sides of mountains.

No. Besaid as it was now was better. Small and personal and easy to defend, with its feet firmly on the ground.

He and every other Besaid villager pretended not to notice the looks of snooty distaste whenever a summoner on pilgrimage came through. Of course, thinking about summoners in any capacity at the moment was a wasp’s nest in his brain he didn’t want to deal with, so he shut that out quickly.

When he got to Lulu’s house, he clapped his hands three times in the traditional way, loud and echoing against the hanging curtains that graced her front door. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed them aside and ducked into the space that Lulu and Yuna shared. Hell, he spent so much time here, he might as well call it his house too, but he wasn’t _quite_ ready for that.

“Lu!” he called, as he walked in. “We gotta talk, there’s something….”

And then he stopped in the entryway, confused. Huh. The house was empty. There was no fire in the grate, no elemantic spell books open and humming faintly, no familiar scent of Lu’s favorite tea coming to a boil. In fact, it felt like nobody had been home all day, which was weird. Yuna being gone, he could understand, she was always at the temple, learning her white magic spells. But Lu was _always_ home, except on feast nights. And tonight wasn’t a feast night.

There was only one explanation, and it turned Wakka’s guts to ice water.

“Oh, no.”

His sandals flapped as he sprinted up the hard-pressed dirt track, following it back the way he just came. The shadows from the temple were blurring and spreading, getting thicker and darker as the sun dipped behind the mountains at last, the light fading from searing orange to the indigo of a fresh bruise.

The temple doors banged satisfyingly as he threw them open and ran through, drawing a few shocked gasps from the parishioners, those kneeling at the statues of summoners past. Like just a few hours before, he was making quite the entrance and quite the scene, only this time he didn’t head for the healing rooms, burdened with a dying boy. 

No, this time he was already running up the central staircase, the one forbidden to all but summoners and their guardians. Each step was breaking the most sacred of taboos, but he really couldn’t find it in himself to give a damn. Not until he knew for sure, anyway. Not until he knew for absolutely certain that Yuna had gone to the Cloister of Trials.

It was only when Bishop Treno stepped in front of him, put a firm hand on Wakka’s chest, stopping his mindless dash, that Wakka belatedly felt shame and dismay.

“Wakka!” the man exclaimed, his bald head and elaborate robes shining in the temple’s candlelight. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Is-....is Yuna….?”

He stuttered, stopped, tried again, a hand flapping ineffectively at the sealed doors just behind Treno. The Bishop’s expression softened, and he nodded once.

“She and Dame Lulu entered the Cloister early this afternoon.”

Early this afternoon, when Wakka had been on the beach with the Aurochs. Lulu and Yuna had deliberately waited until he was out of the village to enter the temple, to contend with the trials, to sequester themselves with the Aeon. And if he hadn’t cancelled practice, he wouldn’t have known until tomorrow, perhaps. And worst of all, the nuns and priests had said _nothing_ to him when he brought the stranger for healing. It felt like a hand was clamped around his throat, squeezing the breath out of his lungs. He gulped hard, and stepped back, his sun-tanned skin blanching visibly. Treno took pity on him, and gently guided his nerveless legs and feet back down the stairs.

“Come, Wakka,” he said kindly, using every trick in a bishop’s arsenal to comfort the afflicted. “Come and pray. Lord Braska is here now, he’s watching over Yuna, just like you can. Come now.”

Without resistance, Wakka was pushed to his knees at the cold, stone likeness of Yuna’s father. Without thought, his hands formed the spiral and globe of the penitent’s prayer, bowing his head over his cupped hands. Muscle memory took over and kept him from screaming out loud, screaming his grief and denial at the temple’s domed ceiling.

It took him the better part of an hour to stop shaking.

***

He lost track of time, eventually. He shifted from kneeling to properly sitting, after the pain in his kneecaps complained louder than his need for propriety. If Yevon took issue with him flat on his ass and praying for Yuna….well. Yevon could suck it. The sun had long since set, all the faithful had left the temple and headed home. The nuns and priests were doing the same, regardless of the charges they had. And Wakka prayed on, hands cupped and head bowed and throat tight.

It had to have been close to midnight when the door to the healing wing slammed open, and Chap-...the stranger strode out. His eyes were blazing and distant and unfocused, as if he had heard some unheard call that only he could answer. Wakka was on his feet a mere second later, but even that was too slow.

The boy did something absolutely impossible, and disappeared in a flash of blue, reappearing a moment later at the top of the sacred path, not even wobbling or hesitating. Bishop Treno was there of course, standing watch over a summoner communing with an Aeon. He couldn’t even gasp in astonishment as the stranger pushed him out of the way, hard. Treno fell to his side with a pained cry, and the boy strode into the Cloister of Trials like he belonged there.

As the door slammed with a dread sort of finality, Wakka was taking the stairs two at a time until he was kneeling at Treno’s side.

“You okay, Bishop?” he asked, eyes wide with shock. And he wasn’t the only one.

“He….he just appeared out of nowhere!” Treno said, sitting up with difficulty. “How in the name of Yevon did he do that?”

“I dunnow,” Wakka said slowly, turning to look at the door to the Cloister. “But I think Yuna might be in trouble.”

They stared at each other for three long seconds, and then Treno nodded once. Giving his permission and benediction to a former guardian entering the Cloister without the precepts and rites. It was the worst taboo being broken yet. Yuna _had_ a guardian already, who was down there in the trials with her. Lulu was supposed to lay down her life to protect Yuna, after all, even when a stranger wearing her dead fianceé’s face appeared. But Treno was giving Wakka explicit permission to go after the strange boy and put a stop to this nonsense before it came to that point.

Knowing that somehow this was going to be the beginning of the end for him, Wakka got to his feet and followed.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It should have been him down in the Cloister with Yuna. But he’d faltered and Lu had to step in and it was all a damn _mess._ A mess which he couldn’t help but believe was entirely his fault. 

The door closed behind him with barely a thump, and he was left alone. Again.

He knew what to expect down here, having studied all the great stories of guardians past. There were a few that made it back alive, after all. Hell, Lu was one of ‘em. It was tradition, that each summoner have one guardian to accompany them, two at the _most._ And having two was considered a sign of weakness, honestly. The gossip in Bevelle flew fast and furious when a summoner dared to take more than his or her share of guardians. Hence why Wakka had resigned and Lu had taken his place and Yuna had _promised_ she wouldn’t attempt the first Trial for at least a year and _ugh._

He was beginning to regret sponsoring the stranger.

He was beginning to regret a lot of things.

As he moved further down the symbol-laden corridor, he felt a thousand stone eyes peering at him. This temple belonged to Valefor, so naturally the eyes all had wings, stylized and spread, centering the sightless gaze to pin any intruder to the floor. Or at least that’s what the texts said. The eyes would only allow entry to the initiated and dedicated. Of which Wakka was neither. He realized his shoulders were hunched up somewhere along his ears, bracing himself for the impact he knew was coming. _Yevon sees all,_ was the oft-repeated mantra of his life. The mantra that was intended to keep the citizens of Spira humble, to let them finally reach atonement.

But after a thousand years, humility was everywhere and atonement had to be soon, right? Probably not, if complete strangers that looked like his dead brother and could teleport himself around was able to penetrate the innermost sanctum of a temple. Not for the first time in his life, Wakka knew he was in over his head.

It had been five years. Five years since Sin’s return, after the longest Calm on record. (No wonder High Lord Braska’s statue was so venerated.) Five years since Chappu told Lulu he was joining the Crusaders….and not come home. Five years since Lu had buried her shattered heart in a guardianship for a summoner that hadn’t survived. And then four years since Yuna had set her jaw and told Lulu and Wakka that she was going to follow in her father’s path. Four years since he and Lu sat down late one night, and made a pact and a promise. 

Two years since he broke that promise.

Lulu had studied with him, lectured him, gave him all her copious notes of the temples that she’d visited in her last pilgrimage. He learned all the Aeon’s particular temples, the fiendish puzzles and traps designed to weed out the weak and unwary and unworthy. He learned the warp and woof of every single Yevon teaching available to laymen, memorizing them and keeping them close. Maybe too close. He was eaten alive by doubt, by questions. Until he finally said, one dark and terrible night, that he couldn’t ever be Yuna’s guardian. That he couldn’t live through it.

And so Lu had sighed, and set her jaw, and took up a mantle she’d sworn she’d never wear again, and it was _all Wakka’s fault._

The expected blow didn’t come. The thousand sightless eyes staring at him had no power over his movements or his thoughts. He kept moving unhindered through the sacred halls, noting that all the spheres and puzzles had already been solved, each blockade swept aside with a visible competence that was dazzling. Of course Lulu had this on a lock. She’d done it before, after all. It wasn’t until he was standing at the lift to the lowest level that he realized the next problem.

The lift was locked in the down position. It wouldn’t come back up until Yuna was done communing with the Aeon. And the stranger was nowhere to be seen.

Wakka felt stupid for a hot minute, wondering where the hell that dark stranger could have hidden himself in the maze….when it finally hit home. The stranger had taken advantage of his snazzy, sneaky teleporting trick and zapped his way to the bottom of the temple, into the Aeon’s Door.

“Shi _iiii_ it,” he whispered, peering down into the dim blackness. And yet….there was no screaming from below, no scorching fire or fizzing lightning or crackling ice magic. So either the boy was hiding, or he’d already overpowered Lulu. And no matter how good the stranger was, Wakka knew that Lulu had the sort of power (and instincts to backup that power) that would make any sort of enemy think twice.

Unless that enemy had her dead fianceé’s face. That might have caught her by surprise.

The walls along the lift’s shaft were smooth and formless, leaving Wakka no purchase to scramble down. Jumping wasn’t an option, unless he fancied two shattered legs, and worse. (Tournament soon, no no, don’t jump, your team needs you….)

With a defeated groan, he sat down on the ledge of the shaft and buried his face in his hands, elbows on his thighs. Feet dangling over the abyss, he let out a long sigh, and then pulled his headband down over his eyes. Just to keep himself from seeing his failures, at least for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry, Lu,” he whispered. It wasn’t Yuna in his thoughts, which was why he was such a shitty guardian. “I’m so sorry.”

All he could do now was wait.

***

Lulu heard a strange sort of shuffling noise by the lift, and her head snapped up out of her meditation. Sharp red eyes fixated on the recessed corridor, pinpoint focused and unyielding. She had failed as a guardian before, and she never would again. Every single noise, every single little detail had to be parsed and dealt with instantaneously. No other option was available. Lady Ginnem had died because Lulu had faltered. Never. Again.

The stillness and silence wound out, stretched on and on after the initial suspicion. Ten. Fifteen. Forty seconds….

It was nothing.

With a sigh, Lulu forced herself to relax. Her feet hurt, after so many hours standing at the Aeon’s Door. Her stomach was growling imperiously at her, demanding nutrition. And her mouth felt like cotton wool, dry and tasteless after so many exhausting hours. A guardian should be able to ignore the feeble demands of the body, and yet Lulu had issues with it even to this day.

She’d been on two pilgrimages, and this was shaping up to be her third. An unheard-of failure in a guardian. Lady Ginnem had been reckless and imperious and - frankly? - fucking _stupid_ in the face of it. Lulu had demurred….and had been overruled in the end, which resulted in a dead summoner and a live guardian. A reverse of the natural order. 

Father Zuke had taken one look at the Calm Lands, and collapsed under the weight of his name and privileges and his fear.

She’d never gotten to Zanarkand.

The number of guardians who’d made it back alive at any point were few and far between. Even Lord Braska’s guardian, Sir Auron? Hadn’t survived the pilgrimage. And _everybody_ knew that Lord Braska was the best summoner ever, with his five year Calm. Sir Auron was a legend, and the legend placed his date of death to the hour, minute, second of Lord Braska’s, as the Final Aeon was called forth. 

Lulu felt like the worst sort of failure, having outlived two summoners.

If she outlived a third….well. It wouldn’t be for long. A woman could handle only so much heartbreak. She’d take matters into her own hands, if Yuna…..

No. Don’t even think it.

Clenching her teeth, Lulu found a pillar to lean against surreptitiously, trying to save her poor feet a fiery pain. The stone bit into her spine, and she felt a satisfying _click_ as a vertebra released just right. She let out a breath in relief and let herself sink back into her mind-clearing meditation. She was imagining the wind rustling through the trees of Macalania, the subtle chiming of the frozen wood crinkling and crackling with every shifting breeze. Macalania was one of the most beautiful places on Spira, in Lulu’s opinion, and she often found her mind wandering back there. Which, right now? _Not_ helpful. She was supposed to be on high alert. The odds of a summoner being attacked inside the Chamber of Fayth were impossibly low, and yet any guardian knew that this moment, this first moment, this first stop on the pilgrimage, ranked among the most dangerous. It didn’t take much for the First Aeon to reject a supplicant. A hesitation here, an unworthy thought there, and it was done. Fiends had nothing on a First Aeon with an axe to grind.

Yuna had been communing with Valefor for nearly twelve hours. Too much. Far, far too much. The First Aeon could last that long, yes. It wasn’t unheard of. But it was also an aberration, and Yevon would make a point of watching said summoner very, very carefully. That Yuna was Lord Braska’s daughter just made this one hundred percent worse. If she failed to live up to her father’s legacy….

The door into the Aeon’s inner sanctum creaked open.

Lulu was immediately at attention, forgetting her hunger and pain and worry. Yuna was emerging! It was her duty to be there, to catch her, to speak the rites.

And then she was beaten to it.

The strange blue flash temporarily blinded her, as it shot like an arrow over her left shoulder, and solidified into the figure of a man. Lulu staggered back, instinctively shielding her face and torso with her arms, after a flash of bright light. Lulu could only stare, horrified, as Yuna fell into the arms of a stranger dressed all in black, with black-blue hair and a hauntingly familiar profile.

“I’ve done it,” Yuna whispered to him, barely seeing his face even as she smiled beatifically. “I’ve become a summoner.”

And he smiled, and nodded, and pushed Yuna’s bangs up off her forehead with a gentle touch. The touch of a lover. An intimate touch that had no place here and now. Lulu’s heart burst with jealousy, which was wholly unworthy and wholly warranted.

“....Who the _hell_ are _you_?” Lulu asked, venom already seeping into her whispered words. And she knew that this was going to be the end of her, somehow.


	4. Chapter 4

Exhaustion wasn’t a big enough word to encompass Yuna’s state after her first trial. Ecstasy came close, awe and horror and a complete depletion of her very self. She knew the precepts by heart, but even years of training could not erase the words of her soul.

_I’ve done it. I’ve become a summoner._

It wasn’t supposed to be about _her_. It was meant to be a dedication, a vow to the temple and to the people. There were words about her solemn consistency, her unswerving loyalty. But in that moment of utter triumph, she spoke the truth. _I’ve_ done it. As if she’d done it all alone, as if those that had come before had accomplished nothing.

The teacher nuns in the temple had often warned her against the sin of ego. It was a lesson that had fallen on deaf ears. She tried, Yevon knows. She truly tried. But underneath the trappings of piety and humility, was a willful stubbornness that would put a Ronso to shame. Wakka tried to talk her out of it. Lulu tried, and came very close to achieving it. She swore she could hear her father’s voice echoing from the Farplane, begging her not to do this.

It wasn’t until Valefor was talking down to her, talking her out of it, that she really dug her heels in.

Her ears were ringing with the Aeon’s final screech, as she staggered to her feet and opened the Aeon’s Door. Her entire body was weak with deprivation and mindless postures, her knees barely supporting her after twelve hours pressed against unforgiving stone floor. She felt like a ninety year old crone, not the seventeen year old maiden she was. 

There was a moment when she wasn’t sure what was real and what was her extreme fatigue. She swore to herself that a strange boy appeared at her side, just as she began her faint. She swore he smiled at her, tucked her hair off her forehead with gentle fingers. His eyes were the same color of the sea on a brilliant sunny day, and his smile was like a benediction forgotten by canon. She swore she smiled up at him, as if she’d known this moment between them had been long since ordained, written before their births.

And then it all went hazy and gray. Like a sphere that was tuned wrong, wavering and indistinct and incomprehensible. Lulu was there, perhaps? The lift took them upwards in silence. Wakka. The stranger. A tense but muffled exchange, as her bleary eyes fluttered against the grittiness she was feeling.

A soft bed. A soothing touch. Oblivion.

Yuna slept through the night and the rest of the day, only stirring an hour before sunset. Her body was screaming for water and food. She felt dessicated, like a corpse left out in the sun too long. But, miracle of miracles, a platter of food and a pitcher of cool water was there, within arm’s reach. Foregoing the dignity of a summoner, Yuna started shoving the room-temperature rice and chicken into her mouth as quickly as she could manage, pausing only to gulp down enormous swallows of the tepid water. Hydration and calories eased the throbbing behind her eyes and the dizziness at the crown of her head, and she finally sat back with a sated sigh. Her stomach felt tight after such a long fast, and she had to swallow hard against her body’s instinct to throw it all up again.

A summoner held in thrall to her body’s needs. A contradiction in terms. She should have sustained herself on faith alone.

The short, huffing laugh that left her was only a tiny bit sarcastic, and she immediately regretted it. Wiping her hands down her face (and letting out a discreet sort of belch), Yuna slumped back down against her bedding, and finally took in her surroundings. 

She was home, in the hut she shared with Lulu, and entirely alone. Which made sense, in a way. A newly-awoken summoner had power sparking off at every turn, white magicks bursting into full bloom at the slightest provocation. Summoners just starting on their pilgrimage had the potential to blast off all sorts of weird healing energies, so it was best to be isolated, at least for a day or two. And, most alarmingly, she could feel the presence of the fayth in the back of her mind, like a weight tied to her spine. Heavy and breathing and waiting for release. Valefor was a gentle sort of soul, as she’d eventually discovered. It didn’t make it any less foreign, any less weird. 

The canons didn’t mention this feeling of carrying a hitchhiker in her brain. 

Maybe the canons had a lot wrong….

“He’s dead! Okay? _Dead!_ ”

Yuna’s head snapped up at the sound of Lulu’s voice, outside of their home. Lulu maintained a household full of comforting things, full of food and drink and soft beds. As if those things made up for the hardness behind her eyes and in her voice. And that same voice was tearing into Wakka, Yuna had a feeling. On unsteady feet, she made her way to the front door, peeping through the curtain with one eye. 

Sure enough, Lulu was all but assaulting the man with her words and her hateful stare, arms across her chest. Wakka looked like a deflated balloon, all hunched in on himself in sheer misery. It was an all-too-familiar tableau, and Yuna’s heart broke for them both, even if she didn’t understand what exactly they were fighting about this time.

“But Lu, I couldn’t just leave him on the beach to….”

“Excuses. Again.”

“No, Lu, it’s not like that, I promise! I never thought….”

“ _You called him Chappu._ ”

Yuna flinched back at the sheer amount of venom in Lulu’s tone, blinking back empathetic tears. A face swum up in her mind, a face she’d almost forgotten after her trial. The face of a boy with black hair and blue eyes and a sweet smile who….

“Oh, my,” Yuna whispered to herself, hand over her mouth. Oh, Yevon, no wonder this fight between her family was shaping up to be the worst yet. She wanted to rush out and put a stop to it before the rift became too great, but another wave of dizziness swamped her, and she had to prop herself up against the wall for a moment. And all the while, the verbal lashing continued.

“It slipped out! I’m sorry!” Wakka’s defense was feeble at best, as if he knew it was indefensible, and took his punishment for his sins as well-deserved.

“Enough!” Lulu snapped, and Yuna could hear the jingling of her jewelry and belts as the woman paced, then finally turned to walk away. “No more. You will _not_ let him in my house, and you’ll keep him away from Yuna, is that _clear?_ ”

“Lu….” Wakka sounded utterly broken, but the fight did not continue. Lu had finally done the sensible thing and walked away to get a better control of herself. Or perhaps not. Delivering ultimatums like that meant that she was absolutely livid. Yuna had been on the receiving end of a few of Lulu’s famous lines in the sand, and had only ever had the nerve to cross one of them. Which was a direct line of causality into her becoming a summoner, really.

Taking a breath and steadying herself, she waited until the sound of Lulu’s stomping away was gone, and emerged from behind the curtain.

Wakka was hiding his face behind his forearm, wiping at his eyes ineffectively, still hunched over and small. Yuna hated seeing him like that. He was one of the gentlest men she’d ever known, sweet and caring and nurturing. He didn’t deserve this hurt. Gently, she put one hand on his shoulder blade, a feather light touch to alert him to her presence. He flinched, and turned to her, his brown eyes wet and puffy.

“Oh!” He looked humiliated on top of everything else, even as he struggled and rushed to collect himself, forcing a smile. Yuna’s heart sank again. “Hey! You’re awake!”

“Wakka…” She tried to make it a greeting, but she knew she sounded so sad, so resigned. Her tone made him deflate again, and he looked away, the smile sliding off his lips like grease in a hot pan.

“You heard all that, huh?”

“Mm-hm.”

“...Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she said firmly, finally moving in front of him and taking his hands in hers. She always felt so tiny compared to him, with his broad shoulders and big smiles and booming voice and unending stamina. Like he was the one destined to become a summoner, and she was just trailing after him helplessly. He flipped his hands out, squeezed back against her.

“Don’t I?” The uncertainty in his voice and on his face was so sad, and Yuna set her jaw.

“You don’t,” she answered, tilting her head at him, inspecting his entire self. “Whoever that boy is? You saved his life. And he was there to catch me as a result. Everything happens for a reason, in Yevon’s gaze.”

She said it so easily, like she actually believed it. But Wakka immediately started relaxing, her words bringing him the comfort of faith. Yuna smiled like a sunrise, and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, standing on tiptoe to reach him.

“I’ll talk to Lulu,” she continued softly. “I’ll talk her down. Get some rest, Wakka. Please?”

“She’s really mad,” he started, grimacing at the memory. Yuna sighed softly. Lulu was her sister and closest friend, but Yevon knew the mage could be volatile at the best of times. Let alone under extreme duress.

“I know. Don’t worry about it. We’ll have the feast tomorrow. It’ll give her a chance to calm down. Okay?”

“Uh, about that….”

He glanced up the road towards the temple, and Yuna followed his glance, and she sighed softly. Already the entire village was sweeping the Aeon’s Grace clear, building a bonfire that had yet to be lit, setting up trestle tables to be loaded with far too much food. The news had already clearly spread, and Yuna’s fete was going to happen when Valefor’s constellation was lit in the sky.

“Right,” she said softly, frowning. She had hoped to sneak into the temple tonight, find this strange boy who’d set things so abuzz, who’d caught her and anchored her back in the world, when she’d needed it most. But then it occurred to her.

She didn’t need to sneak in. She was now a summoner. She technically outranked every single member of the church except the Maesters. If she ordered Bishop Treno to scrub the temple floor with a toothbrush, he’d have to do it.

Her lips curled up against her will, and she tried to suppress the smirk. She really did.

“Yuna?” asked Wakka, almost warningly. He knew that look. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she said calmly, “that my feast would not be complete without the boy who caught me as I fell.”

“Yuna….”

Wakka sounded scandalized and tired all in two syllables, which was a hell of a feat. And Yuna’s sneaky little smirk morphed into something much more angelic and innocent and serene. The smile of a woman who had it all figured out.

“I’ll tell Lulu. You go rest up before the feast begins. Love you, Wakka.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek before darting away, leaving his groan of dismay and acceptance behind. Her temple gown fluttered behind her like a flag as she ran toward the temple, spirit soaring and head still ringing. There was a strange sort of disconnected feeling in her now, as she untethered herself from her old ways of thinking, and flew to the side of the stranger from the sea.

***

Noctis felt so, so…. _so_ damn weird.

Every part of his entire body hurt, but in a distant and numb sort of way. Like a limb that had fallen asleep. Which, yeah, shouldn’t have included his neck and head. It was a sensation that he’d only ever felt when he and Prompto had smoked an illicit substance, and then promptly sworn off afterwards.

He’d lost track of so much. Everything was overwhelming, and then he heard somebody crying. There was no question in his mind that he had to help the person weeping, even as his brain was fogged. He was vaguely aware of his movements, how he’d staggered out of bed, how the warps he’d attempted had left him feeling dizzy and numb (but not pained), a flash or two of a strange sort of temple. How he’d followed the sound of the weeping without a real conscious thought. He didn’t know how he’d gotten where he was, everything was blurry and distant and genuinely _weird._

There was a nagging memory nibbling at the edges of his mind. But no matter what, he couldn’t call it forward.

With a groan, he fell back on the bed he occupied, rubbing his forearm across his eyes. There were bars on the windows, but that didn’t really bother him. It wasn’t until he noticed the bars on the _door_ that he twigged.

Oh. He was in a jail cell. Shit.

Part of him wanted to summon his sword, warp himself free, and be gone. But the distant and foggy memory of that being painful grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. Then again, he’d managed to warp just fine a few hours ago, without pain. He really was confused.

A pair of beautiful eyes peered at him through the haze in his mind. One blue, one green, framed by thick, dark lashes. Those eyes….damn. They looked so serene and yet somehow, he saw himself reflected there, that willful adherence to duty that he’d only ever seen before in Gladio’s eyes, in Cor’s, in his father’s, in Ignis’. She was royalty, that much was certain, in the cotton-wool mush that currently made up his brain.

What was he forgetting? It was so important. It tickled the base of his brain like an annoying tag in the back of a new t-shirt. Gah.

He had to get out of here. He could figure out why his brain was mashed potato later.

Levering himself up onto one elbow, he saw that a change of clothes was laid out for him on the floor, along with a covered tray of what he hoped was food, and a pitcher of water. Blinking in confusion, he swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up, a wave of dizziness swamping him for a second. After it passed, and the little black spots in front of his eyes cleared, he lifted the tray to find….

Oh thank all the Astrals and every one of their messengers.

No vegetables. Just a thick-cut sandwich some kind, with a meat he didn’t really recognize but the scent made his mouth water anyway. He was already tearing into it before he consciously realized, the hunger pressing at his abdomen screaming awake and demanding attention.

He didn’t stop stuffing his mouth until he heard a small, feminine giggle from just on the other side of the barred doors. Looking up guiltily, his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, he felt his entire upper torso burn hot with a blush.

 _It was her._ The girl with the beautiful, regal eyes. It wasn’t a dream. She was standing there watching him pig out, and had laughed at him. Fuck. He swallowed the lump of food awkwardly, feeling it go down a little sideways, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“You must have been hungry,” she said, that giggle still apparent in her voice. She was keeping her distance, a good four feet back in the corridor outside his cell. Far enough so he couldn’t reach through and grab her. He wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or applaud her good sense.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

It was asked in all innocence and sincerity, her head tilted a little, hands folded demurely behind her back.

“...Noctis.”

He knew that was foolish, giving his real name out to a stranger. But some quiet instinct told him that she deserved the truth, and that the truth wouldn’t end up biting him in the ass. Nobody here knew what Lucis was….wait. How did he know that? The thing he’d forgotten breached in his mind for just a second, a humpback whale of an idea surfacing before slipping into the depths again. It was so frustrating.

“I’m Luna.”

His eyes snapped wide. No. No way. That was….

 _”Luna?!”_ It burst out of his mouth in shock, because there was coincidence and then there was the entirety of the universe laughing at his pain.

She looked put-off for a second, blinking owlishly and regarding him in confusion.

“No, um. _Yu_ na. I’m Yuna.”

She enunciated it carefully, so there would be no error on his part again, and something fragile in his chest fell apart. Oh.

“Sorry,” he managed, dropping his gaze away from hers. 

“It’s all right.” Her voice was calm and soothing, sweet and soprano. He looked up again at the smooth assurance in her tone, and he was glad to see that she was smiling softly. “I wanted to thank you. For….coming to help me. In the Cloister.” She made a vague sort of gesture downwards, and he nodded. The memories were still hazy and weird, but he did gather some certain clues from context.

“I….guess I shouldn’t have done that,” he answered wryly, gesturing at his cell. Yuna’s smile fell, and he felt badly for it.

“Well….no. Not really,” she admitted, teeth gently working at her lower lip. It was a tic that Noctis found oddly adorable, and he smiled back at her, spreading his hands and giving her a ‘YOLO!’ sort of shrug. That got another giggle out of her, and his grin got wider.

“Honestly, I don’t really even remember doing it,” he confessed. It brought her mood down again, but out of genuine concern for him. She stepped closer to the bars.

“You were too close to Sin,” she confirmed, her mismatched eyes full of pity and concern. “Wakka said you didn’t even know your own name, when he first found you. So, you’re making progress!”

“Wakka?” Noctis had a vague image in his head of a tanned face and a shock of red hair.

“I’ll properly introduce you two later,” she said. Although there was something hesitant there, some factor that made the possibility somehow awkward. He was missing some vital component. Hm.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“....Where am I?”

Yuna’s expression turned sad and soft, and yet under that was a spine of steel. As if seeing him in this state made her that much more determined to do….something. He wasn’t sure what.

“You’re on the island of Besaid, in the Temple of Yevon.”

He blinked, as most of those words made absolutely zero sense to him. To cover his confusion, he took another bite of his half-finished sandwich, chewing as he thought. Or tried to. It was like herding cats inside his skull, thoughts pinballing all over and refusing to cooperate. Temple. Okay. He was in a temple on an island. That sounded familiar, at least. He nodded slowly at her, and she smiled encouragingly.

“Do you remember anything else? Like where you’re from?”

The word _Insomnia_ flitted to the tip of his tongue, and he swallowed it back. It was imperative he not say that, although he couldn’t recall why. There was a flash of a map, a gloved hand gesturing at it, and the word _Luca_ hovering over it, superimposed like a bad illusion.

“....Luca.” Even as he said it, it felt wrong, and the confusion didn’t lift. He was sure it was written all over his face, but Yuna didn’t seem to care. Perhaps this confusion of his was actually something normal?

“Luca,” Yuna answered with a sigh, and nodded slowly. “That would make sense. Hmm.”

Yuna was suddenly pacing back and forth, the loose fabric of her hanbok shushing and whispering against her legs. He watched her closely, as if he could sense that his fate hung in the balance of whatever she decided. Surely she wouldn’t leave him in this cell?

Right?

“Finish your food, and change,” she suddenly ordered in a no-nonsense tone, and then she bushed a bright pink, realizing she’d gone too far. “Please? I’m going to go get Bishop Treno. We need to get you to Luca.”

“Uh….” His heart sank a little bit, because he knew there was nothing for him in this Luca. He needed to find….what? Damn it. He was missing _something_ , something so important, but it kept eluding his mental grasp. “Okay.”

Yuna’s answering smile was sunny and brilliant and made his heart skip a beat or six. And then she was gone, flying away from his cell like a bird, light and lithe and beautiful. So he did as she said, finishing his food quickly and turning to the clothes laid out for him. It was a pair of loose linen slacks, perfect for a tropical island, in a midnight blue that matched his eyes. Huh. The shirt to go along with it, though, was a buttery yellow that did _nothing_ for him. He frowned at it, not wanting to offend Yuna and her generosity, but like hell was he wearing a yellow shirt.

He compromised. He left on his (slightly battered) Crownsguard tee and threw the offending yellow thing on top of it, leaving it unbuttoned. He looked like a tourist at Galdin Quay. A busted broke tourist with colorblindness, at that.

The sandals that had accompanied the clothes didn’t even rate a second glance. Nope. He was keeping his boots on. Sure they were still waterlogged and encrusted with salt, but he could only imagine the teasing he’d get from Prompto about his royal feet wearing _sandals._

….

….Wait.

….

_”Prompto!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


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